


I Sent Him Home

by allthebeautifulthings9828



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Castiel, Comfort/Angst, Endgame Castiel/Dean Winchester, F/M, Fallen Castiel, Falling In Love, First Time, Homeless Castiel, Human Castiel, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, No Dialogue, Oblivious Castiel, POV April Kelly, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 15:37:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebeautifulthings9828/pseuds/allthebeautifulthings9828
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of how April Kelly found a homeless former angel called Castiel and sent him home to Dean Winchester. It's what SHOULD happen in 9x03, but this is Supernatural we're talking about, so I'm correcting what the writers will inevitably screw up. I want April to be the catalyst that makes Castiel understand what he feels for Dean. So I took matters into my own hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Sent Him Home

If anyone had told me a month ago that a homeless, scruffy man sitting in the rain outside if my restaurant had been an angel - a real life  _angel_ \- I would've laughed in their faces. But I didn't know what he was when he looked up at me from the stoop, shivering like a wet puppy. I still don't know what made me turn around and go back for him. He could have been an addict. He could have mugged me. No, I don't know why I went back but I did.

When I took him home with me that night, he hardly said a word. A wet puddle in my passenger seat dripped to the floor and he kept very still as if trying to control the mess he made. That was the first odd thing I noticed, aside from his quietness - the unusual way he sat perfectly still.

I gave him dry clothes and directed him to my bathroom. The thank you he offered was so quiet that I thought I imagined it. By the time I microwaved a can of soup for him, I found him standing in my living room as if he didn't have any conception of social conventions. And the way he looked at me - it resembled a man on the run. Overly cautious. Suspicious. Absolutely certain I would attack him at any minute. Whatever he did, I decided it was better not to ask.

He offered his name as he spooned soup into his mouth. Castiel. I was certain it was a fake name. Maybe he had schizophrenia or something and the voices brought him to a heightened state of paranoia. Yet, as I watched him awkwardly handle the spoon, I was never afraid. I should have been, maybe. What was I doing with a strange homeless guy in my house wearing my ex-boyfriend's clothes?

But there was something painfully lost about this Castiel. Dark circles under his eyes and sagging lines around his mouth told me that he hadn't slept in days. He said he'd been feeding himself out of dumpsters behind restaurants like where I worked but the thunderstorm had scared him. The flashes of lightning reminded him of when they fell. When who fell, I didn't know.

I asked him if he had any family. He looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time and a flash of raw anguish poured through his eyes. I hadn't expected them to be so blue, so innocent, yet so wise. There were a few people in Kansas, he said, but he didn't know how he could go home. He'd ruined so much. I knew then that he'd known love without touching it, without clutching it to his chest, and having it slip through his fingers brought him to that deplorable place. My heart broke for him. They always said I was too sensitive.

Castiel's body never completely unclenched as he sat on my couch sipping the coffee I'd made. His shoulders turned inward as if he tried to fold himself into not existing anymore. His head never really lifted either. I couldn't imagine someone so utterly alone doing something awful enough to justify the denial of basic human comfort.

The truth was I only meant to pat his arm. His eyes turned to my hand as if he'd never felt affection before. I didn't understand. And then his eyes slid up to mine like studying a mystery. I suddenly understood that all of his innocence, his inherent sadness, his self-imposed imprisonment amounted to a man who had denied himself basic comforts of life. Whatever he loved, whoever he loved, couldn't have known it because  _he_ didn't know it. The wrong sort of starvation occurred to me when I found him in the rain. Want for food was the least of his worries.

I don't guess either of us were particularly attracted to each other. For all of his awkwardness, it wasn't even that satisfying. A human being so thoroughly starved for affection will devour it wherever its offered and I thought I could piece together those broken shards in him.

In the morning, I found him staring out of the window over my kitchen sink. His arms folded around his middle made him look smaller than he was and it appeared to me that what we had done only deepened the sense of isolation in him. Overcome by guilt, I watched him for a long time. I watched him watching the birds fluttering around my bird feeder. The sense of loss clouded his eyes.

The one thing I could do took a little prodding, it seemed. I asked him there in my ratty bathrobe if he knew he belonged somewhere else, with someone else, because it was pretty evident to me. That was the problem, he'd said. There were two places where he belonged. Two families. It confused me. Maybe he was adopted, I thought. So I reminded him of the way I'd touched him the previous night, because that was the one moment any life came back to him, and I asked which road led to that.

Kansas, he'd said, his head bowed.

I told him that he needed to go home to Kansas then. Doubt filled his eyes and his body tightened up again, but I knew I'd hit the right nerve. An abrupt flash of my cousin Rachel occurred to me then, remembering that my aunt had disowned her when she declared love for another woman. Rachel had been homeless and lost at sea for months, just the way this Castiel man looked standing in my kitchen.

So I asked Castiel what his name was, this man he loved. Blue eyes squinted at me so quickly that I knew it was the right theory, but I wasn't sure that  _he_ knew the full extent of his circumstances.

Finally, he said one word. Dean.

Nodding, I placed a comforting hand on the back of his shoulder, not as the lover I'd tried to be the previous night, but as a sympathetic ear. All of the puzzle pieces fell into place and I knew what I had to do. He fell into my lap because he needed a push. He needed someone to rip away the blindfold and show him what he was throwing away by punishing himself for crimes that I couldn't begin to understand.

I packed him a bag. I gave him my ex-boyfriend's clothes, his unused razors, and the other scattered pieces of wreckage from his presence in my home. I made him sandwiches in Ziplock bags. I gave him a hundred dollars, which was my grocery money for the week, but he needed it more.

At the bus station, I made him promise to find that Dean guy and give his new life meaning. He nodded and I saw the terror in his eyes but I saw the determination too. The fear of rejection wasn't enough for him to keep wandering the streets alone.

Six months later, a fat envelope showed up in my mailbox. Castiel wrote me a letter in perfect, neat penmanship about how grateful he was that I found him. He was even grateful for the awkward sex and, with an apology, explained that he'd never been with a woman before. He wrote that he never had to be with a woman again, and he felt that he owed me an explanation. I'd rescued a fallen angel, it seemed. At first, I didn't believe him but maybe it didn't matter.

The photo he enclosed made everything worthwhile.


End file.
